Personal Development Planning

Induction Brief

- work in a small group to discuss ideas and capture images during lesson with guidance from your tutor and independently over the course of the week

bring images as a contact sheet back to the larger group and work together to select and edit down the number of images

be prepared to discuss explain and negotiate as to which imabnvges should be used allow others to select your best images vice versa

agree on a final set of images on per student that work together give an interesting and varied overall representation of blackburn.

Today in session we were given a induction brief based on Blackburn and looking at our town as a potential for creativity, based on the idea that we overlook the amount of potential our own areas have because we see them every day. Do they lose potential because they become mundane and familiar to us.

On Tuesday the 2nd of October we will work in groups to make images around Blackburn and create a visual creative representation of the town itself.

Ahead of the session I have created a Spider diagram of all the potential ideas that i have come up with independently for interesting subjects around Blackburn.

PDP Case Studies

Part of our PDP assignment is to write up some research about 3 photographers 2 contemporary and one historical. Here are 3 photographers relevant to wildlife photography as it is the main area of photography that I am interested in and hope to progress in after I get my degree at UCBC

I am interested in entering the photography industry as a wildlife photographer so I have researched a little into the history of nature/wildlife photography. The term "nature photography" refers to several different sub genres within photography including: wildlife, landscape and macro. In 1826 French scientist Joseph Nicephore Niepce positioned his camera through a window to create the world's first photograph, this  was also the world's first nature photograph. The image he captured contained surrounding trees out buildings, the first landscape photograph.

National geographic

"A member of the Public Lands Committee, his work eventually led to the establishment of Olympic National Monument and Petrified Forest National Monument and the extension of Yellowstone National Park. In 1904 he introduced the legislation that would eventually become the Migratory Bird Bill of 1913.

These conservation efforts won Shiras the personal congratulations of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, but it was Shiras's skills as a wildlife photographer that caught the eye of Gil Grosvenor, Director and Editor of the National Geographic Society and its magazine.

In late 1905, Grosvenor invited Shiras over to Hubbard Memorial Hall, the Society's headquarters, to have a look at the naturalist's wildlife photographs, which had won some impressive prizes. Shiras arrived with a box full of prints, hoping the editor might be able to use a few. He left surprised and delighted, for Grosvenor wanted to publish nearly all of them.

True to his word, Grosvenor printed 74 of Shiras's pictures in the July 1906 edition of the magazine, a single-article issue titled "Hunting Wild Game With Flashlight and Camera." Many years later, Grosvenor recalled it as "one of the pioneering achievements of theNational Geographic. ... It was an extraordinarily educative series: Nobody had ever seen pictures like that of wild animals. ... I can't exaggerate the enthusiasm with which they were received by our members."

The issue was so popular that it was reprinted two years later, one of only two National Geographic issues to have been reprinted to this day."

Information found at 2 sources : http://www.ehow.com/about_6367337_history-nature-photography.html
http://photography.nationalgeographic.co.uk/photography/photographers/first-wildlife-photos.html

George Shiras III - Historical.

George Shiras (January 1st 1859 - March 24th 1942) was a US representative and wildlife photographer from the state of Pennsylvania, USA. He attended the public schools and Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1881 and from the law department of Yale College in 1883. He was admitted to the Connecticut and Pennsylvania bars in 1883 and commenced the practice of his profession in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1889 and 1890. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in 1890. Shiras was elected as an Independent Republican to the Fifty-eighth Congress. He did not seek renomination in 1904. After his time in Congress, he was engaged in biological research and wildlife photography In 1935, Shiras published Hunting Wild Life with Camera and Flashlight : a Record of Sixty Five years' Visits to the Woods and Waters of North America a two volume set of over 960 of his wildlife photographs including some of the earliest 'flash' photography. Shiras was one of the first photographers to use flash with photography and the first trip wire photography. Shiras methods were very much shooting in the dark, he would mount his camera to the front of a canoe whilst traveling along an listen for the sounds of wildlife and then shoot in the diretion of the noise, or set up trip wire bait which when the animal took the bate he would shoot an image. The images he captured portrayed wildlife in their habitats in never before seen ways, revealing the mysteries of wildlife to the world.

(Info found from various sources online)

(George Shira III)

This image was taken using a camera mounted to the front of a canoe. Shira would have heard the cat move and shot using flash in the direction of the sounds, for the time and age of this photograph they are really good. Night time photography in the early years of photography would have made the photographers have to rely on their other senses more rather than just sight as there were less electric lights around and it would have been near pitch black. 
At the time Shira's photography would have appealed to scientists, researchers, conservationists as animals had never before been scene in their environments like this. Also it would have provided a lot of education to schools and the public on the mysteries of the world. Artists, sculptors and other disciplines within art and media would also have been inspired by it seeing the natural world in a new light.

This is one of Shiras most famous images of 3 dear in a body of water, It was published among many other images in the national geographic magazine and was one of only 2 issues to be reprinted to this day.



Tim Flach

Tim Flack is an animal photographer who graduated from St martin's School of art after studying photography&painting structures. Having spent 20 years as a highly successful advertising photographer working with companies such as Adidas, Sony, and Jaguar Flack now focuses on his personal work and animal portraiture 
Tim Flach's work has been featured in publications such as Creative Review and Stern Magazine, and he has also received many international photography awards including the Association of Photography and British Design & Art Direction Awards and the International Photography Awards Professional Photographer of the Year. His work has been widely exhibited in the UK, US and Far East and Tim has also lectured extensively around the world. Tim's work was documented by Discovery's Animal Planet channel charting the progress of his seven year long project. Tim Flach's major photographic 
book Equus was published in 2009 by PQ publishing.

(Tim Flach) 

Tim Flacks wildlife photography is unlike conventional photography of animals in their natural habitat. He uses extreme close up framing to make the viewer engage with the body language of the animals as they would a human and try to read the emotions of the animals. 

(Tim Flach)

As far as his technique goes he uses a lot of very dramatic studio lighting which is intriguing because the studio is usually seen as a human environment, and animals in this environment makes the view concentrate only on the animal instead of its surroundings. Some of his images are in a documentry style but others I would say are more comercial you would see them in publications or maybe even adverts.



(Tim Flack)

I really think this series of images of a dog shaking was inspired by Eduard Muybridge's series' of images because it is frame by frame motion. I think it's really good that a modern contemporary photographer is still using Muybridge as an influence to their work. 
I really like Tim flachs take on wildlife photography as it is different to the conventional idea of wildlife photography

All of my infomation from Tim Flachs biography was found here
http://www.cranekalmanbrighton.com/photographers/tim-flach/biography.html
Tim Flachs website: http://www.timflach.com/.